After Tianyan left, only Jiang Lijin and Chiron remained in the room.
Chiron didn't move. He stood by the bed, his gaze falling on Jiang Lijin's half-dry hair.
"It's getting late," Chiron spoke, his voice carrying a hint of hoarseness. "The black market is full of shady characters. It's not safe for you to sleep alone. I'll stay and keep you company."
"No need," Jiang Lijin refused bluntly. "Go back to your room."
Chiron stood still.
"What?" Jiang Lijin raised her voice. "You just said you wanted to be my blade, and now you won't even return to your sheath?"
Chiron stared at her fixedly for a few seconds before compromising. He picked up his coat from the bedside and put it on with slow, deliberate movements.
"Call me if you need anything." He walked to the door, resting his hand on the doorknob, and paused for half a second. "I'm right next door."
The door closed. The room fell completely silent.
Jiang Lijin let out a long breath and fell backward, sinking into the soft bed.
She had chased Chiron away because she needed absolute privacy.
Even though her communication with Xiao Yi was entirely in her mind and didn't require speaking out loud, Chiron was too sharp. The man's observational skills were incredibly strong; no subtle change in expression could escape his eyes. She didn't want him to notice anything off while she was communicating.
"Xiao Yi," Jiang Lijin called out in her mind.
No response.
"Xiao Yi?" she emphasized her tone.
After a few seconds, that familiar electronic voice finally sounded.
"I'm here, Host."
The voice sounded weak and listless, completely different from the usual excitable system that would scream and ship couples at the drop of a hat.
"What's wrong with you lately?" Jiang Lijin rolled over, looking at the carved wooden beams overhead. "Are you addicted to playing dead? Before, on the capital planet, when Graven went crazy, you made no sound. When we were escaping later, you were silent too. Even just now with Chiron and me... If you hadn't answered me just now, I would have thought you were scrapped."
Xiao Yi whimpered pitifully a couple of times.
"I wasn't playing dead... I've just been so tired lately."
"Tired?" Jiang Lijin was amused. "You're a virtual product made of code and data. You don't even have a physical body, and you're telling me you're tired? Where did you go to do hard labor?"
"I'm not sure either." Xiao Yi's voice grew smaller. "It just feels like my core code is running very slowly and sluggishly. Sometimes it's even a struggle just to scan the surrounding environment."
Jiang Lijin frowned. A system could get tired? This was beyond her understanding.
She suddenly remembered something.
From the very beginning, Xiao Yi had been different from any system she had ever seen. It would ship couples, shipping them even crazier than a hardcore fan watching a drama. If Chiron and she made eye contact for more than three seconds, it could scream for ten minutes.
It would also get greedy for food. Last time when Tinia prepared a feast, it whined in her head all night, saying, 'I really want to taste what that meat is like.'
It would even pick rooms. When Su Han assigned her a house before, it actually said, 'I want one too.'
What did a system need a house for?
What was a virtual product made of code getting hungry for?
Jiang Lijin had always treated these as Xiao Yi's programming bugs, or a comedic persona set up by its unreliable developer.
But now it said it was tired? It wasn't the mechanical warning of low energy, but an indescribable exhaustion.
It was exactly like a person—not physically tired, but mentally exhausted.
"Is it a lack of energy?" Jiang Lijin suppressed the trace of unease in her heart and first asked for the most logical explanation. "I owed you over two thousand points before. Did that affect your operation?"
"It's not a matter of points," Xiao Yi denied. "System energy and points are two independent algorithms. I'm just... indescribably tired. Um... the kind of tired you humans feel when you haven't slept for days and have been working on an empty stomach."
Jiang Lijin fell silent.
Something was very wrong... but she opened her mouth and ultimately didn't ask the question.
It wasn't that she didn't want to ask, but that she didn't dare. She was afraid the answer would be beyond what she could handle. She was even more afraid... that Xiao Yi would disappear like Xiao Er did.
"Alright, go rest for a bit." Jiang Lijin relaxed her tone. She didn't even realize herself that she had used the word 'rest', a word only humans would use.
"Let's talk about today first. Why did unlocking the Jiyang Galaxy reward a thousand points? Before, the Sirius Galaxy and Valoran only gave a hundred."
"I just checked the database." Xiao Yi's electronic voice perked up a bit. "The reason this galaxy is so valuable should be because it's extremely hidden, a blind spot not marked on the interstellar navigation charts. To hide the black market, Tianyan and the others must have used some kind of cloaking technology to erase the coordinates of the entire galaxy. The more hidden the galaxy, the higher the unlocking reward!"
When it mentioned being valuable, its tone carried a subtle kind of joy.
"Okay, let's not dwell on that." She nodded.
"Besides hiding from the Empire's arrest warrant, I came to the black market for another reason." Jiang Lijin tapped Xiao Yi in her mind. "You said before that as long as I unlocked one more galaxy, we could connect to the main system. Now that the Jiyang Galaxy is unlocked, I want to connect."
Xiao Yi froze.
"Now?"
"Yes, now." Jiang Lijin's tone was resolute. "I've had enough of being kept in the dark. Why did I transmigrate here? Why am I the only 3S-grade female? Am I considered dead or alive right now? If you can't answer these questions, I'll go find someone who can."
She had had enough of being a pawn. Whether it was a pawn of the Empire, a pawn of the black market, or even a pawn of this baffling system.
She wanted to flip all the chessboards and be the dealer herself.
"Also," Jiang Lijin added, her tone half a degree softer than before, "I also want to figure out... what exactly you are."
When she said this, even she was stunned for a moment.
She originally wanted to ask what kind of 'thing' it was, but when the words reached her lips, she swallowed the word 'thing' back down.
If Xiao Yi was really just a program, a string of emotionless code, it wouldn't matter what she said.
But what if it wasn't?
Xiao Yi remained silent for quite a while.
"Host... are you worried about me?"
"Who's worried about you?" Jiang Lijin immediately rolled her eyes. "I'm worried about myself. If you break, I won't even have a place to open the store. That would be a huge loss."
"Oh." Xiao Yi's voice sounded a bit disappointed, but it quickly cheered up. "Alright, alright, I'll try to establish a connection. But Host, connecting to the main system isn't as simple as you think. Unlocking the galaxy only granted the permission. You've gotten a phone and know the number, but whether the call goes through depends on whether the other side picks up."
"Then call," Jiang Lijin sneered. "Keep calling until it picks up."
Xiao Yi was stunned. After a long while, it let out a very soft 'Mhm'.
A faint electric buzzing sound echoed in her mind, crackling like an old radio searching for a frequency.
Jiang Lijin closed her eyes, waiting with undivided attention.
The sound of electric static lasted for a long time. It was intermittent, drifting near and far. Occasionally, there would be a split second of clarity, as if the connection was about to go through, but in the next second, it would be swallowed up by a dense barrage of noise.
Xiao Yi was clearly trying very hard to connect.
[I can't get through... Host.] Xiao Yi's voice was weak. [There's no feedback from the Main System. There isn't even a signal of rejection; it's completely unresponsive.]
Jiang Lijin opened her eyes, her brows furrowing.
The Main System wasn't answering? Or did the Main System simply no longer exist?
She recalled all of Xiao Yi's recent abnormalities.
A bold conjecture began to form in Jiang Lijin's mind. What if Xiao Yi wasn't a manufactured system?
What if it was originally something else, or someone else... forcibly stuffed into the framework of a system?
Just like her—the soul of an orphan from Blue Star, stuffed into the body of a cannon fodder's original owner in this interstellar beast world.
Looking up at the wooden beams overhead, she suddenly felt a chill creeping down her spine.
[Xiao Yi.]
[Mhm...] Xiao Yi hadn't fully recovered yet, its voice sounding sluggish.
[Do you remember how you were born? What is your earliest memory?]
Xiao Yi thought for a long time.
[...My earliest memory is you.] Its voice was very soft. [The first image I saw when I woke up was your consciousness. Before that, there was nothing. No data, no code, no images. Just being scooped out of complete darkness.]
Scooped out of the darkness.
Jiang Lijin gripped the edge of her quilt tightly.
She remembered the feeling she had when she first woke up after crossing over—that suffocating sensation of suddenly breaking the surface from deep water, her consciousness exploding as it returned to existence.
It was exactly the same as what Xiao Yi had just described.
[Alright, don't dwell on it anymore.] Jiang Lijin released her grip on the quilt, her tone suddenly relaxing as though nothing had happened. [You should rest first. If we can't connect, then we can't connect. It's not like missing today means we won't have a chance tomorrow. We can talk about it once you've recovered.]
[But Host, weren't you in a hurry...]
[What's the rush? I'm currently the Empire's number one wanted criminal; the one thing I have plenty of in this universe is time.] Jiang Lijin let out a yawn. [Go get some rest.]
Xiao Yi gave a reluctant hum, and then the faint electronic background noise in her mind gradually faded away, leaving a silence so profound it was as if it had never been there at all.
Jiang Lijin rolled over to face the window.
Outside, the purple night sky of the Silent Sun Galaxy stretched out before her. There was no moon, only the cold, distant glow radiating from faraway star clusters.
She was pondering over one particular detail.
If Xiao Yi truly wasn't an ordinary system program, and if its human-like traits weren't by design but rather the awakening of some innate instinct, then why had the so-called Main System completely lost contact?
"Little piece of trash," Jiang Lijin muttered softly.
She wasn't even sure who the insult was meant for.
Regardless, Xiao Yi was already in hibernation and couldn't hear her anyway.
